Beltway Insider: Trump, Governors Clash, Economy, Protests, Germany Bills China Deceit/Damages, Election

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President Trump, with his Coronavirus Task Force, have announced a comprehensive plan to reopen the nation, and restart the economy, on a rolling basis, setting benchmarks on testing, new cases, and allowing governors to make statewide determinations.

 

The President's job approval rating, according to the website fivethirtyeight.com, which tracked polls of likely or registered voters for the period ending April 11, 2020, decreased by .3 percentage points to 44.1% of those polled who approve of his effectiveness as President and those who disapprove of his effectiveness increased by 1.4 percentage points to 52.1%. A slight 3% of the population polled have no opinion. Ratings are calculated weekly.


Beltway Insider: Trump, Governors/Pandemic, Economy, Relief/Reopen, UK PM, Ebola, China/Dog Meat, Election


Trump, Governors Clash on Reopening Economy

The Trump Administration, this week, presented a blueprint for reopening the nation including a set of guidelines, which included benchmarks gathered from multiple data-driven standards which states must meet before a full reopening can occur.

The standards obviously include a "downward trajectory in cases presenting coronavirus-like symptoms or a downward trajectory in positive tests. The criteria also included hospitals having the resources to treat all patients without crisis care and a robust testing program for healthcare workers."

While a dozen states have already begun to ease restrictions, the majority are maintaining vigilance and refusing pressure to ease up to soon. According to NBCNews "two-thirds of all Americans feel it is too early to reopen the economy."

Guidelines

"These new guidelines represent the next phase in President Trump's data-based approach to protect the health and wellbeing of Americans. Thanks to the commitment and sacrifices of Americans across the country, we have seen critical progress in flattening the curve. A long-term nationwide shutdown is not sustainable and would inflict wide-ranging harm on the health and wellbeing of our citizens. The President's data-based approach will protect the health and safety of Americans while laying the groundwork for economic growth. These guidelines will allow healthy Americans to safely return to work as conditions allow while protecting seniors and other vulnerable Americans," the Guide Lines for Opening Up America Again released by President Trump's press office said.

What Recessions Have Taught the American People

Even as the current economic tsunami has continued to roll across the nation, wiping out all economic growth created after the 2008-2009 Great Recession, the economy will bounce back.

As in any crisis, including the 2009 Great Recession, when the nation's business, and individuals, held onto their cash reserves, after this 2020 pandemic crisis, it will be discretionary spending that will slow the economies return to pre-pandemic levels.

The most important factor in the bounce back is restoring the public trust. Consumer spending will remain low, which may signal a recession, although the public will become cautious spenders, the economy will slowly reopen.

Until the public trust is restored, and while it is a campaign season and the trust factor will become a campaign issue, it is more the concern of a second or third wave which may create the need to enact short term stay at home orders which will weigh heavily on the rush of consumer spending.

States Form Block Coalitions to Reopen

Governors throughout the nation, who have recognized the high communicable rate of the Corona-virus, or have been hit by unprecedented infection rates, are now focusing on a two fold plan of easing restrictions, which have clearly resulted in a lower exposure and infection rate and subsequently a lower death toll than what had been projected and anticipated.

With the curve flattening, which results in less daily infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths, the next phase is reopening the cities, large and small, which have either a high-density proximity or propensity of high communicable spread.

Governors of both east and west coasts, as well as seven mid-western states have formed inter-state coalitions resulting in a comprehensive data driven plan, in correlation to federal guidelines, of reopening each state. Under the federal guidelines, governors can also reopen county by county as long as the benchmarks are met.

New York State, which has largely been considered the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States has experienced a third straight day of lower death rates. This data driven fact, is hopefully, the beginning of a pattern that will continue until the number is at zero.

Citizens Protests Over Shutdowns

As the disconnect effect continues to ripple across America, cities and towns which have seen limited exposure, are rising up exercising their First Amendment "right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."


White House Deep Sixes COVID-19 Outbreak, Human Toll Devalued Against Trade Deal


Many see the temporary shut-down as a gateway to a longer, more prolonged time period of economic uncertainty, which for many produces anxiety based on past associations when the government did not build stimulus checks and pandemic aid into standard Unemployment Insurance.

Citizens in Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia, Texas, have continued to defy the state government and demand a re-opening of the economy. Many even brandished signs suggesting wearing a face mask is a violation of their rights.

When states do reopen, with restrictions, failure to comply may result in steep fines such as $1000.00 as is in place currently in some states for violation of stay at home orders or failing to wear protection.

Unemployment Continues to Spike

Even as the nation is experiencing, in its epicenter, a decline in the death rate, the pandemic is not over and nowhere is that more evident than in the unemployment numbers which reflect an additional 5.25 million filed for unemployment this past week bringing the national total to more than 22 million Americans currently unemployed.

With waiting weeks suspended, and the government CARES act providing an additional $600.00 per week, recipients can receive from week one. Failure to register and collect is not the fault of the government.

Government Stimulus Checks have begun to hit for those who had direct deposit information on file with the IRS and will continue with payments expected to appear on Saturday, Monday, or Wednesday of each week.

Sioux Falls Smithfield Food Processing Plant Spawns 600 Cases

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem,(R), who refused to issue a stay-at-home order is now in the center of controversy as her state is home to the Sioux Falls Smithfield Food Processing plant, which is one of many food processing plants across the nation, facing a COVID-19 cluster outbreak.

"Of the Sioux Falls plant's 3,700 employees, a reported 518 became infected, and they infected a further 126 people connected to them. The infections originating at Smithfield represent a significant share of South Dakota's 1,411 confirmed cases of the virus," The Sioux City Journal reported.

Cluster cases, outbreaks in prisons, confined processing plants, nursing homes, are quickly become the hot spots in the fight against the coronavirus. With no place to go, unless a new dynamic to the spread of the virus is confirmed, it can only infect the cluster population.


World News: A China with Two Faces


The concern, of course, remains the intermediary spread of the coronavirus, which at its origin, in Wuhan, China, the spread from human to animal and then to wet market livestock, resulted in universal belief that the virus was highly communicable, which it is, and could spread between humans and animals, which has also been proven which raises the question, does the virus spread from infected processed food worker to the food they are processing?

Smithfield released a detailed statement, which can be read here. Additionally, they have committed to a three-day shutdown to de-sanitize the factory.

"These include mandatory 14-day COVID-19 related quarantines with pay as an uncompromising effort to protect our dedicated employees. We've also relaxed attendance policies to eliminate any punitive effect for missing work due to COVID-19 diagnosis or quarantine," said Smithfield Foods president Kenneth M. Sullivan. He also added a list of preventive safety measures.

China Re-examined Over Coronavirus Totals, Pandemic Origin

President Trump, along with his top Coronavirus expert Dr. Deborah Birx, have challenged the exactness of the early information, origin, and coronavirus totals coming from China.

President Trump said via Twitter, "China has just announced a doubling in the number of their death from the invisible enemy. It is far higher than that and far higher than the US., not even close!" @realDonaldTrump, 4/17/20

"I put China on there so you could see how basically unrealistic this could be," Birx said. "When highly-developed health care delivery systems of the United Kingdom and France and Belgium, Italy and Spain with extraordinary doctors and nurses and equipment, have case fatality rates in the 20s and up to 45 in Belgium, which has an extraordinary competent health care delivery system and then China at point-33." Newsweek reported.

News agencies around the world played media bits of the swiftness of the Chinese government's response to the mysterious virus that had descended upon the city like a communicable cloud of disease.

Without a precursor, without internal knowledge, facts based on a pre-assessment of global possibilities, determination of infectious rates it would be impossible to react with the speed and efficiency that has been recorded.

A time lapse tape shows two medical facilities built in record time, which is possible even under normal conditions, and isn't the point, the point is one day after a global announcement the Chinese government apparently had an infectious diseases response team assessing the situation and deeming it highly communicable and had already estimated the amount of additional medical space needed to combat the spread.

By January 24, 2020 the infection rate, while obscure, had reached more than "several thousand," according to Macleans.com, which also features a time lapse video of the "building [of] two prefab hospitals from scratch in just two weeks."


President of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Offers Don’ts and Dos on Coronavirus


With the incubation period for the corona-virus anywhere from two to fourteen days, and as we know understand, it is possible to b A-symptomatic, and spread the disease without knowing, and also a third tier of mild or non-existent symptoms, which in the early stages would not have raised suspicions of exposure.

Moreover, land mass, not simply population, as we also understand the workings of the virus, the potential of intermediary transmissions, which may include animal carriers, and subsequently animal or pet transmissions to humans.

The World Health Organization, unless they broke standard protocol, "presents a timeline for infectious disease investigations. SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the most recent corona virus which was also declared a global epidemic was controlled in a short period of time, after the initial six-month waiting period, before the investigative team arrived. Essentially the WHO and all other global disease investigative bodies receive notice of a new contagion, a disease threat, the team is not mobilized with the first ping on the map. The disease may burn itself out, like a dud firecracker, it burns brightly, eats up the wick and fails to ignite," reported Haute-Lifestyle.com.

Even as the president announced he would suspend funding to the World Health Organization, the timetable of his reaction to the coronavirus was brought into question. Essentially the WHO and Chinese Government officials are the front lines of information and determination of communicable levels.

The United States may not have received the first-tier information and the manner in which the virus's traveled, moving from China to Europe, gave the administration some advance warning, although the president did not declare a national emergency until mid-March.

Germany Send Medical Bill For COVID-19 Damages

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is somewhat more convinced of the Chinese Government's active participation in the Coronavirus cover-up which led to the global pandemic, left 2.5 million world citizens infected, and 167, 369 dead. Germany experienced 146,286 confirmed cases resulting in 4,676 death.

The economic costs of the Stay at Home orders, the absolute need to push-back against exposure resulted in catastrophic economic costs which the Chancellor rightly believes these Coronoavirus damages are directly the result of China's failure to maintain safety procedures. Rising costs of medical bills notwithstanding, the cost for failing to notify the world's governing bodies of the impending, and possibly inadvertent, release of a bio-terror weapon: $130 billion for deceit and damages. Remittance upon receipt.

Election 2020: Obama Endorses Former Vice President Joe Biden; Sanders Tables Student Loan Forgiveness Plan

After a pause in the 2020 Election campaigning, former Vice President Joe Biden secured endorsements from his former boss President Barack Obama, who said, "To meet the moment, the Democratic Party will have to be bold. I could not be prouder of the incredible progress that we made together during my presidency. There's too much unfinished business for us to just look backwards. We have to look to the future. The kind of leadership that's guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace — that kind of leadership doesn't just belong in our state capitals and mayor's offices. It belongs in the White House. That's why I'm so proud to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States," The New York Times reported.

With Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders suspending his campaign and endorsing his former rival, his Student Loan forgiveness ploy is tabled also. Sanders, who had an ability to assemble a grass roots campaign that was admirable, has never presented the Student Loan forgiveness plan on the senate floor.

Over the last four years, since his spoiler campaign against former democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Sanders who touted the forgiveness plan as a foundation of his candidacy, has not introduced, authored, or co-sponsored a Student Loan Forgiveness package.

With the possibility of presidency clearly diminished and in reality, non-existent, now is the time to act as opposed to tabling those broad, idealistic, campaign promises which inspired a nation of youth to believe in the process.

With Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Senator Sanders, now both out of the presidential picture and both pitching Student Loan forgiveness plans to the public, now may be the time to consider co-authoring the bill which they both so famously sued to elevate their position during the campaign season.

The upcoming election will have 23 Republicans defending their senate seats and 12 Democrats defending theirs, there is a real possibility a democratic senate could make this promise they both endorsed a reality.

"Research has suggested that cancelled debts can be a major boost for borrowers and the economy overall. When 10,000 borrowers had their private student loans canceled, their income increased on average by $4,000 over three years, a 2019 working paper found," reports MarketWatch.

Congress and the Department of Education have the legal authority to cancel all student loan debt. They can immediately stop tax refund offset and wage garnishment for borrowers who are behind on payments, and they can put loans on pause while waiving interest.

 

For more information on President Donald Trump www.whitehouse.gov.

Sources: Various © Articles covered by Copyright protection.